March 14, 2007

Mailer on Tech

My freshmen have been reading Norman Mailer’s Why Are We at War? I’ve enjoyed going through it a couple of times. I like the end, where he includes snippets of ideas; among them is this one on “technology”:

“ Given the modern world of technology, I don’t know whether the race or culture question is paramount. The long-term tendency for the world is to have no races. Technology has become the dominant culture in existence and may soon be the only real culture. The similarities between computer users all over the world may now be far greater than their differences in ethnicity. (88-89) ”